


dress me up and watch me die

by PolzkaDotz



Series: october madness [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, M/M, Revenge, The Coldest Girl In Coldtown AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-09 13:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20995463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PolzkaDotz/pseuds/PolzkaDotz
Summary: Neil is a newly turned vampire, who wants nothing but revenge for what happened to his mother.Andrew just recently found out he has a twin that is living inside a Coldtown—government quarantined and protected cities that were infested by vampires—thanks to the lives and YouTube videos that Aaron and his friends make to show how life is like inside a Coldtown.Neil wants to kill some people, and get rid of the bodies.If Andrew can get his hand on a vampire, he can call himself a bounty hunter and collect his prize for the bloodsucker, freeing this newfound family from the Coldtown.They kinda shouldn't be able to work so well together, but they do.





	1. welcome to the end of eras

**Author's Note:**

>   
i'll be honest with you: i'm experimenting with my writing, and this reads like a mess. Not just that, but it's also unbetaed. Read at your own risk.  
  
I will explain the general plot of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, my favorite vampire book ever, through the next chapters but if you have any questions, leave them in the comments or on my tumblr!  
  
ps: title from Panic! At the Disco's "Emperor's New Clothes"  


At the end of the day, Neil was thoroughly aware that currently he was one of the luckiest vampires in the world. 

When that whole mess happened in America and vampirism started to spread through cities, before the Coldtowns and vampire streamers, Neil was human (and also answering to the name Nate Smith), his mother had been alive and his father was not only alive as well, but no longer imprisoned. Nate and his mother (named Eliza for the time being) had to keep a close eye on their environment, but they weren’t _worried _in Germany. At least, not that worried. 

Even his father’s people weren’t really a pressing concern for Nate—yes, his mom never let him forget about them, but they were just a worry in the back of his mind. He had more worries than a normal 16 year-old, but not that many. Nate mostly just needed to be careful not to call attention to himself, not make any real friends, pay attention to what they told him (and what he told them) and alert his mom if something unusual happened. 

And something unusual did happen. Not in Nate’s life though, and not in Europe. 

People had been acting weird in city they’d been currently staying. They’d been forced to come back to America because his mother’s European forger had been caught and they needed new papers. Unfortunately, the only forger who could make those papers in the time frame that his mother wanted dealt only face-to-face. 

So they came back. The forger lived one hour away or something like that from San Francisco, and didn’t bat an eye at his mother’s jerky movement and trembling hands—nor her wild eyes, that swapped all rooms with quiet desperation. 

His mom spoke quiet and politely when the forger handed the documents to them, though. Her mask would be back the moment they stepped outside, but as she inspected the documents, Nate could see the relief in her eyes. They were back in the safe territory that she wanted them. 

It was unlucky for them that San Francisco had recently been infected and people were going Cold. It was starting to be reported on TVs, but Eliza had banned TVs from their life just because of the possibility that the noise from the TV might cover up the sounds of someone breaking in their hotel rooms or stuff like that. 

So when Eliza came back from the grocery store with wild eyes and even wilder hair, clothes in disarray and breathing hard, Nate paid attention to her weirdness. She didn’t say anything to him as she put the grocery bags in the kitchen counter and locked herself up in their bedroom, though. 

Nate didn’t dare go after her, so she laid down to sleep in the sofa and couldn’t even nap, too used to having a breathing body snaked around him. In the next morning when Eliza came out of the bedroom saying, “We need to call your uncle”, Nate blinked blearily at her and just knew that one of those “unusual things” that needed to reported had happened—not to him, and apparently they needed to be reported to the British crime lord he was related to? 

Nate wouldn’t guess in a million years that the thing had been vampirism, though. 

* * *

Eliza hissed and hissed at the phone in a voice too low for Nate to understand when talking to his uncle, her accent coming back and putting an annoyed frown on her face. At the end of the call when his mother angrily hang up and stared at her phone for a few seconds, the verdict was clear: they need to get away from America, _fast._

“Why?” Nate tried to ask but was ignored as his mother frog-marched them to their bedroom to pack. 

In their haste, Neil accidentally caught the zipper of his bag on his finger. The blood was minimal and the pain was tolerable, so he put his finger in his mouth and kept packing. 

When he looked up, he saw Eliza watching him sucking his finger with a hungry look in her eyes. She was _trembling _too, just a bit. Nate hesitated and took his finger out from his mouth. Eliza’s gaze followed the finger as Nate dried it in the bottom of his shirt; she was clearly entranced. 

“Mom?” Nate said, hesitantly. “Is everything okay?” 

Eliza stared for a few seconds, but then seemed to come back to herself. She shook her head hard, gave Nate’s hand a last annoyed look and zipped up her own bag. 

“Pack faster,” she ordered angrily, giving her back to Nate, who did indeed packed faster. 

* * *

When it happened, Nate thought he was going to die. 

Well… technically, he _did._

They had been walking to a bus station, because of _course_ Eliza was going to make them take the long way to the second nearest airport (and she almost hit Nate when he tentatively asked why they were going to Oakland, not to the San Francisco International Airport) when Lola Malcolm made herself known, walking from one dark alleyway with a bright smile on her face. 

Nate didn’t even think a single “Fuck” when Eliza started to run in an erratic pattern, he just followed her. They ran and ran, until they found the coverage of some woods and started to trip their way in. His father was now also in pursuit of them, not just Lola. Lola’s brother had also appeared and Nate could remember Romero’s laugh like it was echoing in his ears. When he glanced back once, to see if they were at least a little bit safe, Nate was able to see that his father’s right arm DiMaccio had also joined them. Nate couldn’t _believe _how much bigger DiMaccio seemed to be from what he remembered. 

They screamed Nate and Eliza’s names, and Nate went back to looking at where he was going. They were not anywhere near far away from them and getting distracted was stupid. 

When Eliza was shot though, Nate knew that it was over for them. Especially because, after a few milliseconds of silence, Nate noticed that the bullet had gone through his mother’s shoulder and grazed him in the arm as well. 

Nate put an automatic hand and turned to give his mother a frantic look. Eliza, however, watched Nate’s blood trickling down his arm in the faint moonlight, hypnotized. 

“Mom?” Nate said, giving a cautious step back. 

“Abram,” his mother said and Nathaniel jolted to action, analyzing her hungry look and knowing it was over, over, _over_. “You’re gonna run alone now.” 

“But, mom—” 

She threw her bag at him and he had to cut off the whimper that escaped his mouth. Eliza looked like she wanted to make him whimper more, even though now she wasn’t watching him bleed like he was going to be her next meal anymore. “_Now_,” She commanded, and turned to run back to where his father and his people were approaching. 

Nathaniel had been taught to obey her, independently of what name he called him. When Abram came out, Nathaniel was supposed to do what he was told. 

Later, he would be informed about the naughty vampire that hadn’t been killed by the appropriate people, and now vampirism was part of America. 

Later, he would learn that his mother had been bitten by an inexperienced new vampire, was able to fight him off but unable to kill him, preferring to come back to Nate so they could run after she had done enough research on what the fuck was happening in their area. 

Unfortunately for her, a bite was enough to infect someone, to make them go Cold. 

If she had had the time, she could have maybe fought off the Cold and become human again. 

If she had had the time, they might’ve had a way for her to drink blood safely, die and Turn safely—like it would be done to Nathaniel. 

Nonetheless, no knowledge that came too late was able to save his mother or his mortality. 

Nathaniel knew that there was no way his mother survived that night. The awareness that he’d killed the vampire that had bitten her had followed them wasn’t enough for him. 

Because that had been what Nathaniel stumbled over when he was trying to get out of the woods. The vampire attacked him, but Nathaniel had one of his mother’s gun in his hand. He shot the vampire through the chest cleanly but not before his teeth grazed his arm. 

Nathaniel didn’t know the person he’d killed wasn’t one of his father’s people. He didn’t notice the unusual sharp teeth and didn’t tend to the bite right away. He couldn’t stop the thought that he should be running, so he ran and called his uncle the first chance he got. 

His uncle was able to put him a plane to England sooner than Eliza would’ve been able to. 

Fourteen hours in an airplane… In hindsight, it was obvious that his uncle was willing and eager to get him back to London. After all, even if Nathaniel didn’t know what was happening inside his body, the symptoms would start to appear. 

* * *

An unpleasant feeling: seeing a family member after a really long time and being unable to stop paying attention to the way that his vein pulsed in his neck, like a caged animal asking to be let out. 

Another unpleasant feeling: finding out exactly how badly timed their visit to the US had been and wondering if his mother would still be alive if they just hadn’t gone. Just for some fucking pieces of paper. 

A very pleasant feeling, though: drinking the blood of his aunt (who was a vampire, which explained why Mary Hatford, when she still was more of a motherly figure rather than a health-safety dictator, always kept her side of the family away from Nathaniel) and whatever human blood they had available. Being turned in the Old Way, before hell broke loose in America thanks to some dumb vampire who didn’t take care of his creation. And knowing that being turned in the old way would make you stronger, which was especially good to feel safe even now that you didn’t have a murderous father after you anymore—or that was what his uncle’s contact had told him. 

Better yet: receiving the information that some of your father’s people were still alive, not in jail and available to being murdered. 

Nathaniel wouldn’t be able to bring back his mother, wouldn’t be able to make his father pay, but he would right some wrongs in his life through vengeance. He just had to wait until the dust settled in the U.S., then… 

He’d go back and hunt each one of his ghosts. 


	2. ice has melted back to life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew watches some streamers and finds a familiar face. Maybe now it's finally time to give Cass up?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
this was a STRUGGLE. had to write on the buss offline, it didnt save when i connected to my wi-fi, rewrote everything at the party im at and now im going to drink!!!!!  
PS: There's a RAPE SCENE. I tried to keep if vague. Stop reading at "Later, much later"

Andrew Doe was just an ordinary foster kid with an unusual lovely foster mother and the more expected sexual abuser brother when the world went to shit and vampires started to roam the United States of America. Obviously, the sensible government’s response was to lock them all up behind tall walls and put the Army to watch their borders, so that no vampire would come out. 

They called those quarantine cities Coldtowns. 

Of course there were still humans inside Coldtowns. That was the perfect way to guarantee that the public wouldn't succumb to the same health issues. If they had enough living people inside Coldtowns, no vampire would feel the need to come out of there to feed. The government provided food and items necessary for survival and that was that. 

There was no money needed inside Coldtowns, technically, but it was still useful to have it. After all, if you had money you could hire a bounty hunter to hunt a vampire for you and exchange the vampire for a marker—government documents that let you trade a vampire for a human stuck on a Coldtown. 

Of course that people inside would try to find a way to make money. And that's how Coldtown streamers were born. 

The traditional media was like, “Of _course _these kids would go for the exposure route!” and then the anchors would shake their heads and sport judgmental faces. What the media didn't seem to understand (or at least they didn't broadcast) was that it was fucking hard to get money inside of a Coldtown and if you didn't have anyone outside, you were screwed. 

Like, sure the government provided basic need products and food. They were the ones that had quarantined vampires alongside healthy citizens, so it was the least they could do. They didn’t see the need to get any further than that. 

Some streamers obviously didn't want to get out—they were finally _something_—but some streamers kept donation pages open in the hopes that someone would save them. 

It was _insane _when vampires started to stream their lavish parties too and people went absolutely crazy for them. Vampires were pretty, had nice dresses, incredible suits, and they held you gently while drinking your blood from plastics tubes (to avoid infecting any of their food supplies, of course). 

The streamers had no chance. The money started to trickle down and they had to get creative in order to have the amount necessary to buy their freedom. 

Andrew wouldn't say he was obsessed with finding Coldtown streamers but he definitely didn't change tabs when he happened upon one. It was probably just the greener grass effect. Andrew couldn't help to think about the advantages of still being codependent on the state to keep himself alive (basically like the foster system) but with the possibility of no Drake Spear in his life. 

What would Andrew do inside a Coldtown though? Would he become a donor? It didn't sound like it would be that terrible—Andrew knew what it was like to have horrible things done to his body and donating blood wasn’t one of them. 

Or maybe he would become a streamer, with his blank personality and dead eyes? 

It didn't matter what he thought he would become because San Francisco, a few minutes away from Cass' home, never even made a peep to what happened inside its walls to the public. San Francisco had gone black when it became a Coldtown and it would never come back alive. 

Andrew wasn't stupid enough to daydream about joining it, but the others Coldtowns… they looked like a better deal than what he'd been dealt. Andrew probably wouldn't have minded if he'd gotten stuck in one of them from the beginning. 

He wasn't inside, though. Andrew Doe was just a foster kid in Oakland with a foster mom that wanted to adopt _him_ and with a foster brother that showed his enthusiasm about a new sibling in an unpleasant but familiar way to Andrew. 

The things Andrew had going on to himself: daydreams about vampire towns, a blade to cut himself open to survive Drake and Cass' gentle smile to sooth his desperate need to end it all. 

The streamers that took him to a parallel reality were _safe, _even if a little pathetic. 

However, Andrew knew deep inside that it would never become truth. He would never get inside a Coldtown. 

That was what made it baffling to stumble upon a new group of streamers and find _his own face staring back at him. _

* * *

They called themselves the Foxes and all of them had misfortunate stories about how they got stuck in Palmetto, technically a small and relatively new Coldtown, but the only one of them that Andrew watched avidly was Aaron Minyard. 

His doppelgänger. 

Beside the fact that Aaron seemed to emote his anger pretty much constantly by way of frowning, they seemed to be identical. Their voices matched, their ridiculous short height matched, their complexion (blond hair, white translucent skin and eyes so bright they looked _tawny_), their probable everything. Even their age and birthdays were the same. 

The only thing Andrew didn't have was the surname. Oh, and the close family because apparently Aaron had a cousin called Nicky Hemmick. They sometimes talked about their childhoods and Nicky constantly joked that even if they weren’t physically similar, they really shared blood relations. 

Wasn't that an interesting thought? Andrew might have a bigger family than he expected. Which meant, of course, a family _at all_. 

Andrew wished he didn’t care about that when Drake got himself involved. 

That disgusting, slimey, greedy fucker caught Andrew watching the Foxes streaming _once _and was able to glimpse Aaron in them. His reaction was pure _delight. _

“What's that?” Drake asked, slotting himself behind Andrew at breakfast, visually disregarding the way Andrew stiffened because Cass had looked at them when Drake spoke. 

As soon as she turned her back on them to tend to their pancakes though, Drake pretended to peck Andrew's cheek. Even without contact his proximity was enough to make Andrew recoil a bit. Drake smiled. 

“So?” Drake prompted. “What's that? School project or something?” 

Andrew said nothing, but Drake still tapped his phone screen in order to see the name of what he was watching. 

“Palmetto Coldtown – Foxes streaming live right now?” Drake read and frowned, confused. “But that's _you_.” 

Andrew swallowed dry but still didn't say anything. He wished Drake was dumber because them he could've made up any lie and nothing would have to change. Andrew would still cling to his screen that showed him another possibility for a family, even if he still kind of wanted Cass to become his mom in the future. Andrew would only having to deal with Drake during his leave from the Navy, after all. Aaron and Nicky would probably not want to deal with him, after all. 

Unfortunately, Drake was a little cleverer than Andrew wished he was. 

“That's not you,” Drake's voice held _wonder_. Amazement. He watched as Aaron rant about something in the background, completely disregarding what Renee was saying in the foreground. Suddenly, Drake said loudly, “Mom! Come see this!” 

He took the phone from Andrew's unresponsive hands and showed it to Cass, who at first looked at Andrew's phone with a vague pleasant smile on her face, then gasped when she finally understood what she was seeing. 

“What a miracle!!” She kept repeating as her son grinned and grinned and grinned. 

Later, much later after Cass told Robert about what was happening and how now they had to get enough money to donate to Aaron so he could finally “meet Andrew”, Drake came to Andrew's bedroom. 

“Can't wait 'til mom bring your twin home,” he said, panting a little just from imagining whatever his sick brain was capable of coming up with. He laid himself down on top of Andrew, who fought him a little for the first time in a long while. 

Drake watched Andrew squirming for a few seconds, a smirk pulling his lips upwards. When he got tired of it, he slapped Andrew in the ear—not hard enough to damage Andrew’s hearing but hard enough that he was left absolutely disoriented. 

While Andrew was trying to get his grip back on reality, Drake was able to get his pajama pants off. 

Drake told him exactly why it would be a good idea to have Aaron there, near him. Drake told him that if they were really identical, he wouldn't know what to do with two perfect asses like this for him to take care of. Drake said he would cherish them. Never let them go. 

“And if mom can't get him out with a marker,” Drake groaned and must have been grinning while he stopped moving, because Andrew could hear it distorting his voice as he kept going, “I can always go for the Army instead of the Navy. Be stationed at Palmetto’s. Have you at home and him at work. Hmmmmm. The. Perfect. Dream.” 

Those three last words were punctuated through his hips. 

When Drake was done and out of Andrew's bedroom, Andrew hugged himself for a few seconds before getting up and cleaning himself. As he got back to his bedroom, he approached his bedside table and picked up his phone. 

He stopped the video that had been recording for 32:45 minutes and took a deep breath. After getting himself together, Andrew got all the money he had hidden in his room (which wasn't much, but Cass was a firm believer that allowances shouldn't be freely given but earned through hard work at chores), invaded Cass and Robert's room as silent as he could, got all the jewels, phones and whatever else he thought it was possible to sell and left in their places a note that he had written before Drake even got in his room. 

The note said: 

_Cass, _

_This has been happening since I got here. I won't let the same happen to my brother. If you try to get him out of Palmetto before I can, I _will _upload the copy of this video to as many social medias as I can. _

_If you are really a decent person, don't _ever_ bring another kid to this home while he's still here. If you are a decent person, don’t ever bring a kid here ever again._

He didn't bother signing his name and didn't bother locking the door behind him as he left. 

* * *

First order of business was selling all the stuff Andrew had stolen. 

He would never be able to sell it legally but he knew enough of the underworld to be able to get 600 bucks for everything. That, plus the 120 dollars he already had wouldn't be even close to the amount needed to hire a bounty hunter. Andrew knew how to pick locks and he could try to steal one of the many dark but occupied houses he passed by, but that was too risky. He couldn't be sent to juvie before he was even able to try to contact his brother. 

Even worse, the Foxes had a list on their blog that explained who was supposed to come out first. Aaron was not the first one out. The site stated, “Katelyn, Nicky, Aaron, Kevin, Seth, Allison, Matt, Dan, Betsy, Abby and Wymack”. 

Andrew wouldn't have enough money to get a bounty hunter to get all of them out. He didn't even think that a bounty hunter would accept money from a teenager. 

He had no other choice. 

* * *

_Hi. My name is Andrew Doe, _Andrew stayed quiet for a few seconds as he stared down the camera lenses—the only thing from Cass he hadn’t sold just in case. _I’ve lived in the foster care system for my entire life. Recently, I’ve learn that there’s someone identical to me trapped inside a Coldtown. His name is Aaron Minyard. He and his friends are streamers of Palmetto’s Coldtown and they are trying to raise enough money to get out of there. I plan to hunt vampires and give them markers. If you want to help me, donate money to them. If you want to see how I’m doing, subscribe to my YouTube channel or go follow me on andrewhuntsvampiresformarkers.tumblr.com_

Andrew looked at the camera and sighed. _Goodbye._

Then he went to all the Foxes’ social medias and spammed their comments. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
excuse me, im gonna get super drunk now. I'll answer comments tomorrow morning. BYE


	3. snatch your chain (mace your eyes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
Andrew and Neil find common ground after pointing a gun at one another. That's how a friendship starts, right?  
Right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
First of all, I was supposed to have posted this two days ago. Here's what happened:  
1\. this chapter ended up longer than what i wanted  
2\. it was a holiday here in brazil, so all i wanted to do was lie down and pretend to become one with my bed or something  
3\. my phone screen stopped fucking working, and i MAINLY write in my phone;  
have fun reading tho???? lmao  
ps: TINY BIT of Andrew flashbacking to yikes-y memories. He's not the narrator of this chapter though, so it's just Neil's reacting to him, okay? ok.

Nathaniel’s stay with his uncle was a gift to his much-needed knowledge of the vampire world and also emotionally stunted because _fuck him _if he was going to process anything that had happened in his life. 

The most important thing that his stay with his uncle gave Nathaniel was one last identity, this time probably forever; after all, his uncle had gotten tired of watching Nathaniel spring to attentiveness (his uncle called his expression “terrified”, but fuck that) just by hearing his own name. 

That was how Neil was born. Neil was quiet (up until a certain point), suspicious of new people as well as new environments (with no point of restrain) but, on top of it all, Neil was obsessed with two things: abusing Uncle Stuart’s contacts on the whereabouts of Nathan Wesninski’s people, and planning. 

It didn’t take long for Stuart to give up on trying to convince Neil to put his vengeance to the side. Neil knew that his uncle also wanted to avenge his sister, deep down. But after those few initial tries, Stuart just provided whatever Neil asked him in the middle of the night and didn’t try to snoop around his nephew’s decision. 

It felt like a test of some sort. Neil couldn’t care less, regardless of what was happening inside his uncle’s head. He was going back to America with or without support and he’d kill as many people as he could, or die trying. 

It wasn’t like he had anything to live for. 

It wasn’t like he was _alive_, after all. 

Neil hadn’t asked for it, but his uncle had given him enough money during Neil’s six months with him to last for a good while. When Neil finally announced he was going back, Stuart quietly transferred even more money to Neil’s bank account so he’d have the means to stay in America “until he was satisfied”. 

Not satisfied with providing a shitload of money, Uncle Stuart also gave him a way to contact someone who’d be able to get a house wherever he wanted in America that was close enough to Nathan’s people—“Or whatever else you have planned,” Stuart said to him, letting out a tiny sigh. 

Oh, and of course, a vampire contact to get him fresh blood. 

Not directly from the source, as in live donors. Bagged blood, which Neil knew from living with Uncle that, although drinkable, wasn’t the deliciousness that came straight from a vein. Hannah, Neil’s maybe-Aunt and Stuart’s… something, constantly let Neil taste the blood of her donors so he knew it for a fact. 

Hannah’s kindness also felt like a test too. 

However, now there’d be no more tests. 

Traveling from England back to America was a thrill—especially since he landed during the last remnants of daylight. Neil felt like there was a gigantic target painted all over the protective gear he _had _to wear just to get to the car that his uncle had provided for him, waiting on the airport’s parking lot with the key on the ignition like he had been told it would be. 

Inside the car, although still in the parking lot, Neil felt slightly more protected. He wasn’t crazy enough to start driving anywhere, of course. He waited until the sun came down and then carefully turned on the GPS on the car, telling his paranoia to shut the fuck up, and drove way to his new home for the time being. 

Neil had few expectations. He wasn’t exactly superstitious, but it felt stupid to entertain the different catastrophic scenarios that his undead brain was capable of coming up with. What Neil allowed himself was just one simple thought: 

“_I’ll arrive at my new home, my uncle’s contact is gonna be there waiting for me to establish the blood delivery time or whatever, and then I’ll kick start my hunt. And that’s all it’s gonna be.”_

It was sad for Neil, but that had been enough to tempt fate into fucking with him. Neil arrived at his home and not only was the front door _open_, Neil could hear the faint noises of a fight happening inside. Neil looked at both sides of the dark street that he was supposed to call home, drew his gun out of his concealed bag and carefully went inside. 

To find that there was a… blond _midget _with his back to Neil, trying to use chains to tie up a man who was probably Stuart’s vampire contact, looking incredibly disoriented in his very disheveled suit. 

Neil didn’t even think about it. He turned the safety of his gun on and hit the blond midget on the head with it—not strong enough to kill, just enough to get him to let go of Neil’s blood supplier. 

The guy didn’t crumple into unconsciousness like Neil half-expected him to (because Neil still didn’t quite have the control over his new strength yet, and he knew it), but he did waver a bit. It was enough for the suited vampire at his feet to turn and almost lunge at the guy, ready to attack. Neil stopped him with a simple hand gesture. 

“Go,” Neil told him. “Call me later.” 

The vampire didn’t even stop to question him. He got up, tried to straighten his suit a bit, gave up and ran away through the front door. At least he was considerate enough to close the door when he passed by it. 

Neil obviously overestimated how long the blond would stay down. A silent leg swapped his own legs from under him, and it was Neil who crumpled to the floor. They wrestled for a few seconds and then the universe showed it still wasn’t on Neil’s side: Neil lost his firm grip on the gun after a well-aimed punch from the midget, and not long after Neil had a gun pointed to his face. 

“Don’t move,” the guy said and Neil only kept breathing hard. “Open your mouth.” 

Neil smirked—close-mouthed. He didn’t have to make it that easy for this fucking bounty hunter. “Make me.” 

It wasn’t a telegraphed move, but Neil was still able to see the punch coming towards his mouth. Which was a dumb move from the bounty hunter because Neil was able to grab that hand and wrestle their positions so Neil was now straddling the guy’s hips and able to control his lower limbs’ movement. 

The guy froze up instantly and that was enough to let Neil grab the armed hand and pin it to the ground. The midget was still a little frozen after a few seconds of silence, which confused Neil. This was not what his aunt had told him to expect from bounty hunters. 

Then Neil looked at the guy’s face and was able to see that he was very, very far away from reality. 

Neil felt his stomach drop a little bit when he stopped to think what was happening when the guy froze up. Neil after all, knew the freeze reaction that came from trauma. He didn’t think he had it in him, but Neil felt a little _sorry _for the guy. 

“If you let go of the gun,” Neil said quietly and the guy laser-focused on his mouth. “I’ll stop straddli—I’ll get up. I promise.” 

The guy swallowed, and it looked he had swallowed absolutely nothing because he also tried to wet his lips. Now that Neil was looking at him and truly seeing him, he noticed that it wasn’t just his height that betrayed his age: his face seem to have lost all its baby fat but he was still _young_. Neil wasn’t old, of course, but this guy seemed to be around his own age. 

“What do I have as a guarantee that you won’t lie or shoot me?” 

“You have my word,” Neil said and the guy, still a little green, snorted inelegantly. “Also, I came here to hunt my own ghosts, not to evoke another person’s ghosts.” 

Neil was finally submitted to most of the guy’s attention. After a few seconds of a stare down, the guy’s fingers slowly lost its hold on the gun handle, one by one. As soon as he wasn’t touching it anymore, Neil snatched it from the ground and threw himself away from the guy until his back hit the other side of the room. 

The guy didn’t get up for a few seconds. After physically shaking himself, the _teenager_ (like Neil himself was, although the guy seemed a little more alive than Neil) slumped on the nearest wall and went back to staring Neil down. 

Neil couldn’t control his tongue. “I’m sorry.” 

“Shove your sorry up your ass.” 

Neil’s lip trembled to smirk again, but it wasn’t funny. “I guess we might be at an impasse.” 

“No, we’re fucking not,” the midget teen said, and seemed to have accepted his fate. His eyes had gone back to its emotionless state, and he stared Neil down for a few seconds before reaching into his pocket. Neil pointed the gun at him, ready for anything, but he just took a pack of cigarettes and started to smoke. “You have a gun, I lost mine fighting with the other guy a few minutes earlier. You clearly have the upper hand.” 

“Well, you see, I wouldn’t mind letting you go, but I feel like you would come back more prepared to take me to a Coldtown to get your recompense or something. I just bought this nice house for myself, you know. It would be a shame to leave it so soon.” 

“You could kill yourself and let me take you to a Coldtown,” the guy answered after taking a long drag of his cigarette. “You have no idea how hard it was to find that vampire and now he’s fucking gone. Thank you, by the way.” 

“Oh, you admit that you’re a bounty hunter that is _that bad_, huh? I guess I understand. It’s not like the government trains _teens_ for that stuff.” Or anybody for that matter; if you wanted to be a bounty hunter, you’s become one by your _own risk and training_, but that wasn’t important. 

“Shut up, you must be my age.” 

Neil laughed, sudden and short. “Hey, dumbass,” he said, grinning, showing his fangs fully. “You can’t have missed the information that vampires are immortal. I could be much older than you.” 

“Are you much older though?” The guy sounded like the answer didn’t matter, but also like he was confident that he was correct. 

Neil didn’t want to lie to him. Neil watched as he brought the cigarette and took another uncaring drag of his cigarette. “How old are you again?” 

“Seventeen. Almost eighteen.” 

“Yeah, no, I’m not older than you. I’m a year younger, actually.” 

“Well,” the guy looked at Neil for a few seconds and then took a deep breath. “Shit on a stick then, you hypocrite.” 

Neil couldn’t help laughing again, and the guy just watched him lose his shit. Yeah, he had just lost a night of his schedule maybe, but Neil had time for revenge. It wasn’t like he was in a particularly tight schedule, anyway. 

It was weird, and probably adrenaline’s fault, but he caught himself asking, “Why do you want a vampire? You don’t sound like you’re after the money.” 

“I’m not,” the guy said and fixed his posture. “I’m after a marker. Well… a lot of markers.” 

“You got friends stuck inside a Coldtown, huh?” 

“Worse… family members that I’ve never met,” the guy paused and seemed surprised by his own honesty. 

“You’re risking your life for people you’ve never met?” 

The guy shrugged and death stared Neil down. “It’s not like I have anyone I know needing me to risk my life for them.” 

The unspoken words were clear, because Neil had the same feeling deep down. It was interesting to find someone else with such a clear disregard for his own life. Sad, too_._

Neil looked at the guy and how young he was, even if he was almost two years older than him. If Neil were in his situation… he didn’t have any idea what he’d have done. Most of his still living family were not in America, but he thought about what would’ve happened if he found out he still had living relatives. Would he try to save them? 

He didn’t know, and now he was a fucking vampire. 

If Neil hadn’t left America when he did, he would’ve been quarantined in the San Francisco’s Coldtown. From what his aunt told him, they would still be able to get him out of there because some vampires had a lot more influence over the mechanisms of Coldtowns than the public was aware, but still… Neil thought about the guy’s words, and how it seemed to be more than one family member. He couldn’t imagine having the opportunity to get out and have leave people inside. 

Well, that wasn’t true. If he had been stuck in there with his father, he’d have let the fucker rot in there. Maybe even try to pay someone to just shove him into the sunlight. 

Neil froze and stop slouching on the wall, getting up after a few seconds. The guy startled a bit at the sudden movement and tensed up, as if he was waiting to be killed or hit or anything like it. He shouldn’t have been worried about it though, because Neil was _planning _again_._

Yes, he had already planned what he was going to do in the general sense, but had been unhappy with how his plans to getting rid of bodies were messy. Also, even if Neil could torture those fuckers like they had done to him and his mother for years, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near fair, or satisfying. 

But… kidnapping them? Infecting them, making them go Cold even if the first bite did nothing to their immune system, and leaving _just_ enough blood in the room that when the Cold finally was too much for them, they would have no choice but to drink it, die and come back as weak vampires? 

Then fucking take them to whatever Coldtown Neil wanted and just getting rid of them? Probably forever, because what the fuck kind of power could his father’s people have inside a Coldtown? 

Neil smirked. They would probably be nothing inside. And who would believe their story? Especially if Neil was careful to not show himself? 

Who would care about what tales vampires could tell, as long as they were locked away? 

It would be even more satisfying them killing them outright. And if he was worried about what they could talk about inside their Coldtowns, Neil could always just use his aunt’s already mentioned influence and kill them in there after a few days or something. 

The advantages of these new, still skeletal plans were that Neil wouldn’t have to deal with any clean up, the guy would get his marker and Neil wouldn’t have to be hyper conscious that, at any moment, a teenager could invade his home and drag him to a Coldtown. 

“I have a proposition to you… but it’s gonna require a little bit of trust.” 

The guy seemed suspicious, but also… what was he going to do? Run away? “I’m… listening.” 

The guy paid attention as Neil explained his life—just a tiny amount, who even cared about the whole sad blah blah blah he could spew?—and frowned when Neil explained what he wanted. 

“Kidnap human gangsters and purposefully infect them?” 

“Yeah.” 

“And trade them for markers?” 

“Yeah.” 

The guy stared at him. “What will it cost me?” 

“Probably nothing. My uncle’s banking my revenge vacation. I swear to you that this won’t come back to bite you anywhere. It’s merely a win-win situation: you get markers and I don’t have to make their bodies disappear, and also they are going to be weaklings in another person’s playground. That sounds good enough to me.” 

The guy frowned. “Sounds fishy.” 

Neil threw his hands in the air and shrugged exaggeratedly after putting his gun away. “Think about it. I’m gonna go unpack.” 

And left the room to go properly park his car in the garage and take his things out of the car (a.k.a. the bag of clothing that he had brought, the bag with money and the bag with guns). Let the guy decide if he was going to take this golden opportunity on his own or if Neil would have to do something to shut him up. 

Neil doubted it would be needed. The guy seemed smart—and better yet, like he was struggling to find vampires. 

If he really was smart, he would just accept the vampire factory they could build. 

* * *

Neil didn’t see the camera recording anything, and didn’t see Andrew stop the recordings with a thoughtful expression on his face. Andrew went to the gallery and pressed play, muffling the speaker with the palm of his hand. Cringing a little bit internally as he watched the video play his first encounter with a vampire and his subsequent failure. 

Or maybe… the guarantee for his future success? 

Andrew’s finger hovered over the delete button for a few seconds. 

He turned his camera off instead and went after Neil. He’d basically have all the difficult bit of being a bounty hunter taken away from him and _free markers._ If anything started to feel fishy though, he could always hit Neil really hard at the back of the hand and drop him and a Coldtown instead. 

* * *

The planning of a kidnapping situation alone was probably boring, Neil thought to himself as he watched Andrew reading over his ideas. The planning of a kidnapping situation with a certain Andrew Minyard? 

It was _entertaining._

Yes, they were usually talking about some really fucked up shit all the time, you know? But Andrew was so deadpan and down for _anything_ that Neil couldn’t help but enjoy himself just a little. It was probably because Neil had a fucked up childhood and never really had the opportunity to create, you know. Bonds. Friendships. 

He wouldn’t call Andrew his friends, but there was a kind of bond formed between law-breakers—or abuse victims. Also from people who had weird and dark sense of humor. 

Neil had informed his uncle about his new plans a few minutes after Andrew came to tell him he was in. After cursing for maybe six minutes straight, his uncle went and found Aunt Hannah, so she could have a go at calling Neil a dumbass too. 

“Huh,” was what Hannah said instead. “What is this guy’s name?” 

Neil told her and heard while she tapped away at her keyboard. Listened to her watching Andrew’s videos, reading Andrew’s blog posts out loud, heard her _laugh_ at the countdown Andrew had in his blog that said, “It has been 28 days since Andrew started to hunt vampires and he’s still alive (for now!)” 

“I like him,” Hannah said, laughter still audible in her voice. Neil heard his uncle spluttering in the background and Hannah shushing him, “Shut up, Stuart, they don’t deserve to be alive. Neil, please do deposit the ones who survive in specific Coldtowns. I’ll make sure they won’t have a nice stay.” 

Neil just said, “Yes, ma’am, thank you.” 

And that had been that. 

* * *

The next few days were a bit hectic. Without really talking about it, Andrew moved in with Neil. He had even sort of introduced Neil to his blog, saying that he had found a cameraman and that his name for safety purposes was “Overbite”. 

Neil didn’t care about being teased for his condition. It did help that, although a very hard person to read, he knew that Andrew didn’t mind his presence at all. It was a nice change from living in co-dependency with a woman that made it clear Neil wouldn’t fare that far without her, or with an Uncle who didn’t really know how to deal with an angsty, bloodthirsty nephew other than throwing obscene amounts of money at him. 

Also, Andrew was _funny_. And he didn’t care that Neil would sometimes freeze when seeing a shadow, or how weird he was around knives. Andrew even accommodated Neil’s necessity of having someone sleeping near him, even though Andrew himself didn’t seem comfortable with that. 

After a week of leaving together, planning crimes and getting used to each other’s quirks, Neil caught himself thinking about Andrew as his _friend_. That thought was enough to make Neil glad that they had finally arrived at a point in their planning were they felt comfortable to go out on their first mission. 

It was a little bit boring, to sit inside their cars in front of a bar that Jackson Plank has been spotted in multiple occasions by Uncle Stuart’s people when they shadowed him for Neil. Neil had made the effort to learn a little bit about his father’s criminal empire, only to learn he was a duke _at best_. Even better, when his father’s death was confirmed, the Moriyama family didn’t bother to stay with all of his father’s personnel. 

Jackson had been booted. Now he was apparently a hitman, but would also do any kind of work for any amount of money. He still maintained contact Romero Malcolm but didn’t seem to have much going on in his life, besides that. 

It was out of the good of his own heart that Neil shoved Jackson on a dark alley after he came out of the bar stumbling a bit. Andrew was waiting in the shadows to knock Jackson unconscious with a baseball bat. 

Neil just wanted to give Jackson a new opportunity to find his purpose in life, you know? 

* * *

They had briefly entertained the thought of kidnapping two people from Neil’s list of useless fuckers, leaving them both infected in a room together so nature would decide who was going to live, gladiator style (Or Axe-style, Saw-style, some hardware tool like that that Andrew swear was a horror movie series or something), but at the end of the day, they decided not to do that because why waste a marker, right? 

Neil kept a hood over Plank’s head and didn’t speak a word anywhere near the guy. Neither did Andrew, no matter how much Jackson cursed. Neil thought about the guy who smiled cruelly at him from his childhood memories, and this guy that woke up in Neil’s basement, infected and took just three days to succumb to the Cold and drink the jar of blood that Neil and Andrew had left for him. Jackson died quickly and, even if he hated to waste blood on garbage people, they needed Jackson undead, not absolutely dead. 

So, while the Cold did its magic to Turn Jackson, Andrew fastened his unmoving body to the electric remote-wheelchair, using the chains that Neil’s uncle had kindly provided for them, strong enough to hold a newly-turned vampire. Neil himself just had the job of filling a popcorn bucket with blood and leaving the straw at the perfect height for Jackson to drink when he finally came back and was hungry like he’d never been before. 

They had already recorded everything they needed for Andrew’s vlog—even if Andrew had called Neil’s camera work “Fucking shit”, for which Neil only shrugged in response, which jostle the camera once more. He grinned when Andrew glared—, never fully showing Jackson’s face _just in case_, but making sure his fang was visible. 

Jackson was chatty again after finally stop sucking on his straw that had been glued to his mouth seconds after he gasped back to Earth. He drank for probably ten minutes straight, without breathing, which would be impressive if he wasn’t such a despicable human unworthy of being impressed by. 

One good thing Neil had to say about the guy, though: he didn’t bore them with begging. Just cursed and kept saying how “they were going to pay”. 

Yeah, of course Jackson had enough material to find who they were. After a few seconds of ranting, Neil tried put a muzzle on him with a ball gag and, when Jackson started to struggle, Neil whispered clear enough to be understood but without showing his voice, “We have a muzzle with spikes in the gag ball, if you prefer?” 

Jackson went quiet after that, and didn’t fight them at all as they put him on the back of the van, or during the whole trip to San Francisco’s Coldtown—not even when they finally arrived there and Andrew marched him to the gates and the Army stationed there started to make noise about how a _teenager _had captured a vampire. 

Andrew gave Jackson to them while Neil filmed from far away and followed Andrew with the camera until he went inside the post where he stayed for a long goddamn time, because they probably kept him filling the necessary documentation for a really long time. 

Andrew came back and didn’t say anything as Neil turned the camera to him, just showed his marker, the full moon’s light glinting on the metal, making the silvery parts look almost white and the golden details look older than it was. Neil stopped recording and they drove straight to the airport, so they could fly to Columbia Metropolitan Airport. 

Neil absolutely did _not_ comment when Andrew started to fidget inside the airport. But Neil could feel Andrew’s pulse beating at the back of his mind, like an earworm song stuck on repeat. Andrew was definitely _not_ fine with flying, but Neil would kill himself before commenting, even when Andrew turned to stare at him after the plane had landed. 

When they first stepped into Palmetto’s ground, Neil again stayed behind to film Andrew from afar again—especially important now since they were under the sunlight now and Neil had to hastily cover himself with a thick blanket because he didn’t feel like changing clothes. 

Again, it took forever for Andrew to appear again. Andrew had told him that the first one to come out would be Katelyn Whatever-Her-Surname-Was—Andrew had never bothered to tell Neil her full name, probably because she was apparently his brother’s girlfriend and Andrew “didn’t like the energy she had”. Neil also didn’t care about her at all to need to know her name. 

Neil was waiting for someone who would be the total opposite on Andrew. The kind of person who annoyed Andrew without him needing to meet them was probably gonna be chatty, airheaded, maybe even unaware of their privileges. 

Surprisingly though, Andrew came back with a girl that seemed _nothing _like that and was actually agreeable even to Neil’s standards—which meant that the girl was quiet, had rainbow hair and had a creepy smile that Neil didn’t exactly approve, even if it probably looked beatific to anyone else. Neil kept filming even though he just wanted to grimace and get away from her. 

It was probably just nerves. Neil probably didn’t have any reason to fear someone named _Katelyn_. 

“They changed the order of who comes out,” Andrew spat the information towards Neil and Neil stopped recording, sighing as Andrew put the girl in the back seat and sped towards the airport again. Andrew didn’t look like he was going to explain anything and the girl, whatever her name, just kept _smiling_. 

It was clearly going to be a long flight back. 

* * *

As soon as they got back to Neil’s house, the girl (Renee Walker as she had told Neil during their long conversation that had been pleasant until she noticed that Neil was a vampire and then she _really _wanted to know about their marker) took over Neil’s computer so she could set up a video chat with the Foxes that currently weren’t streaming. 

Aaron wasn’t there, which Neil could see made Andrew _relax_ a little, for some reason. Neil would have thought that Andrew would at least _want_ to meet his brother, but apparently not. It was fascinating how Andrew never reacted like Neil expected him to, but also a little frustrating. Neil just wanted to know everything he could about Andrew and here he was, being infuriatingly enigmatic. 

Anyway. What mattered was that all three of them were sat in Neil’s dark kitchen, looking at the screen that had David Wymack, Betsy Dobson and Dan Wilds looking back at them. Kevin Day was in the room with them and had been sitting in the empty chair, but now they could only see his torso going from one side to the other on the background, because Kevin had decided to pace after getting too anxious from learning _how_ Andrew had gotten a marker. 

“Gangsters!” Kevin had yelled when Renee finished explaining what Neil had told her in the car and on the plane too. Neil had been kind of impressed with how Renee had been surprises but at least not outright _judgemental _about their methods—which had been interesting to say the least. “I don’t want to be involved with gangsters again!” 

“Calm down, Kevin,” Wymack sighed, rubbing a hand over his tired face. “They probably don’t have any connections to the Moriyamas.” 

“Errm,” Neil said and everybody on the other side of the screen focused on him. “Technically…?” 

“_No_,” Kevin whispered and crouched to give Neil a horrified look. They had to call Abby to get him out of the room and take care of his breakdown. 

“Well, that’s certainly a… cutthroat and mercenary way of getting us out of here,” Dan commented after they were quiet for a few seconds. From the pinched look in her face, they could still hear Kevin having a meltdown, even though their microphone didn’t pick up on it. 

“Gifted horse,” Neil told her, which made Dan frown. 

“A gifted horse that has been kidnapped from a very big farmer.” 

“Not really. The person I infected was an employee of one of Moriyama’s… former employee. A very strong arm, if you will. When the arm died, some… fingers were not hired by the main branch. I doubt they will even notice.” 

He hoped Romero Malcolm noticed, though. It would make Neil’s life a little difficult, but would also provide a brief satisfaction of giving that fucker a little bit of the medicine they’d forced Neil and his mom to swallow for years. 

“That is such a macabre way of—y’know what, nevermind,” Dan shook his head, obviously deeming Neil a lost case and got up as well, although she didn’t leave the room. 

“When we saw that you wanted to help us,” Betsy Dobson said, looking straight at Andrew. “We thought it would be different.” 

“That seems like a you problem,” Andrew said quietly. “I didn’t tell you how I’d do it.” 

“Doesn’t it bother you that you are kidnapping people?” 

“They are not anyone important,” Neil snapped before Andrew could answer. “You seem to think that we’re going to go out on the streets and get the first vaguely-shaped human and infect them. We’re not psychopaths yet, just… practical people. After all, they were going to die anyway! This way, they at least serve a purpose. A _good _purpose.” 

“If you don’t want to use markers that were acquired by… unsavory means, feel fine to refuse them at the gate,” Andrew told them. “But please inform Aaron and my… cousin about it. Don’t keep this to yourselves.” 

“Oh, we don’t do that here. If it involves one of us, it involves all of us,” Dan said and Andrew nodded. 

“If you decide you don’t want to get markers that came from criminals turned into vampires with the sole purpose of getting markers for them, will Renee just go back inside?” Neil pondered out loud and there was a heavy silence for a few seconds as they all thought it over. 

They seemed to be worried about how to answer him. Neil could see how being suspicious in this situation was an appropriate response, but it was honestly dumb. Neil wouldn’t do anything to Renee if they said she was going to stay outside. 

“No,” Renee answered him, quietly. “If they decide they don’t want to be brought out by markers that come from either of you, I’ll just start hunting vampires myself to free them.” 

“Independently of what we decide,” Wymack called their attention before anyone could react to Renee’s words, “the new order on the website is the one that’s going to stay. You’re clearly a pair of dumbasses if you think you can just kidnap people and hope that no shit’s gonna happen.” 

Neil waved his worries away. “My Uncle would be able to deal with anything that came our way.” 

Wymack looked at Neil for a few seconds and then hoovered his hands over his keyboard. “You sound like a little crime lord yourself, delegating cleaners to your messy kills.” 

And then he shut down the connection. 

Neil let out all the air that had stuttered in his lung and tried not to let Wymack’s words sting. It was shitty that he kind of agreed with the man. Uncle Stuart might have inadvertently created a spoiled monster when he just started to give anything Neil asked him for. 

Andrew raised an eyebrow at Neil’s put upon sigh but didn’t say anything. 

“Just so you know,” Renee told them as they watched the laptop screen until it eventually went dark and reflected their serious expressions back. “I don’t mind how you got the markers that got me out. They don’t sound like people who should be free.” 

“You haven’t heard anything about them and what they did,” Neil said, unable to keep the dismissiveness out of his voice. 

Renee gave Neil a serious look. “Haven’t I? Your voice is incredibly expressive, Neil. It tells me enough.” 

Neil wished he could say he did something cool, but he just got up and told them, “I’m hungry,” and left them to whisper at each other. Neil kind of knew that he was often unable to speak impartially about some people in his past, but he would _die _before opening up about his life struggles for someone who wore a coat of fake gentleness like Renee. Neil didn’t know her story, and it had been dumb of him to not research all the Foxes beforehand. 

He sent a message to his uncle, ready to rectify that and went to hide away as he tried not to replay Wymack’s remark. 

He failed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
I might double update just because both chapters were supposed to be up already! However, i only have half of the last chapter written. Oops? Seems like i gotta work on miracle or something??? lmao  
anyway, thank you for your patience. I might be unreliable to answer, but comments are my FUEL
> 
> EDIT: I'm an idiot but [poetic_ivy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetic_ivy) here on ao3 (who has an INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL soulmate au that all of you should read!) did [fanart for a scene from this chapter on my birthday](https://keys-crows-dreamers-scones.tumblr.com/post/189130239476/today-is-polzkadotz-birthday-so-i-drew-them-some) (November 17th) and I forgot to put it here!!!!!
> 
>   
  
  
thank you so much eli its so beautiful T_T


	4. legends never die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
Shit hits the fangs.  
(Sorry for the imagery)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
well, well.... i was supposed to have posted this a lot earlier but i forgot i had to go to my intership and editing ONLY with your mouse is a task from hell i don't wish upon mine enemy.  
But here we are! At the end! If i had written like i normally would, this would easily be 30k. However, the exercise here is to make me write less! And it did it! Sort of. The first two chapters were a little better lmao OH AND BTW the timeline in this is probably WHACK. It's one a.m. for me and my brain was like "???? thats probably reasonable???cant confirm tho lol" so, y'know. Pardon the brazilian  
  
Anyway, hope you enjoy!

After three hours and a lot of deliberation, the Foxes sent a message to Renee to inform them that, collectively, they didn’t mind where their markers were coming from, as long as no innocent people were being harmed. 

Neil huffed from behind them, but didn’t utter a single word. After the verdict, he just went back to sulk in his sun-protected room; all of them could feel the pressure of the nearing sunrise and they had thoroughly changed their schedule to night-time. 

Andrew rose up, not just because he was used to the system he and Neil had going on (taking turns on who slept and who kept watched did wonders to their comfort levels) but also to let Renee talk to her friends alone, but Wymack stopped him by saying his name. “Nicky and Aaron wanted to talk to you alone for a few seconds. Are you okay with that?” 

What could Andrew do? He just nodded and everyone shuffled out of the room, while Renee simply whispered a quiet “Good luck” to him. 

Nicky sat down but Aaron took a little bit longer to stop standing over the computer, showing himself up to his jaw only. Nicky had to sigh and tug insistently on Aaron’s sleeve to get him to sit down. It was clear from Aaron’s face whose idea it had been to have this chat, because it looked like he didn’t want to be sitting there at all. 

“Hi,” Nicky said, clearly looking intensely at Andrew's image on his screen rather than giving the camera some eye contact like he did on streams. “I’m… your cousin, Nicky.” 

“I know,” Andrew said and they went silent for a really uncomfortable time—for Nicky apparently, who kept squirming. Andrew was fine with the silence and Aaron… well, it didn’t look like the silence was the problem to him. 

“Uhh, do you have any questions?” Nicky asked, still sounding awkward. 

“Why did you change the order of liberation?” Andrew’s voice sounded rough, which he had _not_ intended, so he cleared it. 

Nicky opened his mouth to reply, but Aaron was faster, not only to talk but also to sneer at Andrew. “If you thought I was going to send my girlfriend to stay with your psycho ass, you’re fucking _insane_. I don’t trust you. You look shady and, honestly, this whole kidnapping thing just shows that I was right all along.” 

“Actually, the main reason was that we thought it would be better to send some of our stronger fighters to help you,” Nicky added, his voice even more uncomfortable than before. “But we didn’t want to let too many of our good fighters out and leave ourselves without enough people to protect stayed behind.” 

Andrew nodded at Nicky but his gaze was fixed on Aaron’s trembling frame. He must have been shaking really hard in real life if it was this perceptible through their camera. “You seem to have a preconceived idea of who I am,” he commented, still looking at Aaron. “Do you think I’m the evil twin of this dynamic?” 

Aaron scoffed hard enough that Andrew was surprised no gross bodily fluids made themselves known. It was clear from his face that yes, that was exactly what he thought he was. “There’s no dynamic here,” Aaron said and scoffed again, apparently at the absurdity of Andrew’s stupidity. “You know nothing about me.” 

“Yes, I don’t,” Andrew looked at Aaron for a few seconds, but then he shook his head. “You seem to think that I decided to do this because I want to find my lovely roots, or a nurturing family to which I can belong to. I don’t want that. I genuinely don’t need you for that. If you want to keep your girlfriend inside because you’re scared of your big, scary ‘psycho’ twin, that’s your prerogative. If she dies in there, I hope you are able to live with that. 

“But as I said to Wymack almost four hours ago,” Andrew continued, speaking a little loudly over the sputtering of Aaron’s aborted sentences. “You don’t need to accept the markers if you don’t want to. I hope you can feel proud of yourself from your high horse if something bad ends up happening.” 

Andrew silently got up and closed the laptop even though Nicky was saying, “Wait, wait, wait!” 

It wasn’t regret that he was feeling. Andrew’s brain didn’t let him forget the words, but the bad taste they left in his mouth was probably from how he already knew that something like this would happen. Andrew knew deep down inside that there was probably no real family for him out in the world. He genuinely just wanted to help. 

Andrew knew that Aaron wouldn't deny his help, though. Now Andrew just had to manage his expectations over his future relationship with his brother accordingly. 

_Nice to meet you, _Andrew thought to himself and went to Neil’s bedroom to watch over him until it was his turn to finally shut down for four hours and sleep this mess away. After twenty minutes of sitting in the complete darkness, Andrew felt a foot touch his leg. 

He waited for the crawling sensation to start. 

He felt _nothing_. 

* * *

Since they now had the approval of the Foxes (well… most of them), Andrew and Neil decided to change their plans a little. They would try to kidnap both the Malcolm siblings together—and by the way Neil spoke about them, Andrew knew that these two were probably the ones that tormented him the most in his childhood. 

If they were lucky, neither of them would have heard anything about Jackson’s whereabouts and they would still be able to count with the element of surprise. 

Unfortunately for them, both Lola and Romero _had_ been ordered by the Moriyamas to keep working in Baltimore under DiMaccio’s hand. They now worked as security for the “family’s assets”—because Neil’s father might have fallen, but that was still a lot of territory to lose, too much territory, so the Moriyamas kept most of the old team there and just sent a new head to keep the house working smoothly. 

Andrew didn’t even want to think about how much harder it was going to be to kidnap DiMaccio. Neil had said that if things started to get too hard, he could always call his Uncle to try brainstorm another way of getting to him, or maybe even ask for some hired help or something. Or they could ask Neil's aunt for information about vampires who needed to be punished. 

It was incredibly easy to forget that Andrew hadn’t originally come here to help Neil get his revenge. It was incredibly easy to remember that Andrew should’ve been trying (and failing) to find vampires to kidnap. Mostly, Andrew thought those two things were happening that way because of Neil and the vortex he created around him. Even Renee seemed to feel it because, although she didn’t comment, she also never really _protested_ Neil’s blood thirst—and she was the one who had a crucifix dangling from her neck. 

However, Andrew didn’t bother to think much about that. Their focus should be on Lola and Romero. 

Neil had made it clear they were a tiny bit more dangerous than Plank. Both Lola and Romero had a lot more freedom to choose how stuff was going to be done even under Neil’s father’s orders. That was something that Plank had never been allowed. 

Jackson Plank had been a Pawn on their board, while Lola and Romero Malcolm were more like Rooks—two commanding presences from the borders that had less restriction of movements and could be _very_ mobile. 

Still not all that able to think for themselves, though. 

However, Andrew wasn’t stupid. After they successfully kidnapped the Malcolms (_if _they were able to pull it off, rather), there’d be _no way_ to silently abduct DiMaccio. The Malcolms’ absence would be noticed. 

It’s not like they had much of a choice to do anything else, though. The Malcolms shouldn’t be allowed to roam free. 

So after two days of getting Renee acclimated to their plans, they went to use Neil as bait to draw at least Lola out of hiding, but probably both of them. 

If they were lucky. 

* * *

Surprisingly, Lola fell really easily for Neil’s phone call. 

Andrew couldn’t hear her side of the conversation, but from what Neil was saying, she seemed to be ecstatic about Neil’s offer—they were supposed to met up and just hash out everything, duel to death or something dramatic like that. Lola didn’t even seem to care that Neil was obviously goading her to come without an incredible amount of security. 

“That excited to kill me, huh?” Neil commented and made a face at whatever Lola seemed to be monologuing on the other side of the line. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, Lola. But guess what? I don’t have to listen to this. If you really want to do all that to me, you know what to do. Oh, and maybe bring your brother? After I’m done with you, I might have plans for him.” 

Neil hung up in the middle of her sentence, and gave Andrew a tiny grimace. “She’s…” 

“A sociopath?” Andrew offered, without inflection in his voice. 

Neil just shrugged in response and they turned to watch the empty parking lot Neil and Andrew had deemed good enough. 

“You don’t have anyone else to kidnap after DiMaccio, do you?” Andrew asked. 

“Well… I could make a list of every single person who inconvenienced me in my life, but I think that’s taking things a bit too far.” 

“Hmmmm,” Andrew looked up, contemplating the dark starless night. “It’s gonna be hard to go back to hunting vampires again.” 

“_Oh._” Neil’s voice was weird enough that Andrew slowly turned his head to look at him. “Are you worried that I won’t help you anymore?” Andrew didn’t answer that and Neil frowned hard. “Andrew. I won’t just leave you like that, okay? Besides, there are always rapists and politicians and billionaires to be killed.” 

Andrew looked at the tiny smile that Neil was giving him and felt his heart lurch. It was weird, being blatantly _chosen_ like this. Unusual in a way that felt _good_, even though Andrew would never admit it. 

“That seems like a healthy motto to have for your own life.” 

“What are you talking about? It’s just being practical.” 

Neil grinned when Andrew snorted at him, more than obviously pleased with himself. 

It took forty minutes for a car to appear at all, and Lola didn’t even bother to turn off the ignition as she got out of the driver’s side and approached the lonesome hooded figure in the middle of the parking lot with a spring in her step. 

“Hey, Junior, long time no see!” Lola greeted cheerfully. Romero got out of the car at a much more reasonable pace and joined his sister. 

Renee raised her head and Lola seemed to realize that it wasn’t who she’d been expected. 

She tried to draw her gun, but it was too late. Andrew and Neil had already raised their tranquilizers to shoot both of them over Renee’s shoulder. 

* * *

This time, no one even suggested that they should record anything for Andrew’s vlogs. Neil infected both Lola and Malcolm, they put them in different rooms with a cup of blood, and 48 hours later they had two new and fed vampires strapped to wheelchairs. 

Neil’s aunt had told him to drop Malcolm at the Springfield Coldtown and Lola at the Fresno one. It took a long time to get both of them to their respective Coldtowns and then go back to Palmetto, but after a week they were able to get Matt Boyd and Kevin Day. 

Andrew couldn’t care less about talking to them civically. It was a miracle that he still replied to what people said to him at all. All Andrew wanted was to get back to their headquarters and just _sleep_. 

Boyd seemed to have taken a shine to Neil though, asking him everything he wanted to know about being a vampire—if his hair was going to become silky like some of the older vampires, if he liked the red eyes or if he missed his original eye color, if he missed eating solid food, “Do you have to pee? Like, you must pee _a lot_ if your diet is just _liquids_!”—and just generally being a nuisance. 

Kevin on the other hand was quiet the whole way, obviously busier with his constant staring Neil down for some unfathomable reason. Neil was clearly uncomfortable, but didn’t bother to say a single word to stop Kevin’s watchful eyes. 

Andrew could sense some _story _there, but he was too tired to badger Neil into saying anything. 

So yeah, Andrew didn’t _record_ anything to his vlogs, but he did a quick update on his blog about finding two vampires together and still being alive after their encounter, making sure to say that he’d come back later with more details. Comments came almost immediately but Andrew just ignored it and turned to the side to pretend to sleep. 

Neil drove them in a pace that felt like molasses going down on a waterslide, but they finally arrived at their home just a little after midnight. Boyd was still a chatterbox, but Andrew knew that he should maybe try to get used to it. Nicky was after all much more talkative than Boyd. 

“Hey, Andrew, you want to eat anyt—” Andrew gave one single look to Neil, who shut up as he watched Andrew’s face and nodded without completing what he was going to say. “I’m gonna leave something for you in the kitchen, okay?” 

Andrew went to Neil’s bedroom and rummaged through the drawers where his own stuff stayed in Neil’s dresser, changing into comfortable pajamas. He wrote the blog post he had written in his brain during their trip back, posted it and then went to the bathroom downstairs to eat whatever Neil had left him and get his toothbrush. 

The house was more silent than Andrew thought it would be. He’d thought Boyd would still be pestering Neil with many questions. He couldn’t help but tense a little at the quiet, ready to fight if there was anything wrong. 

As he passed in the doorway of the living room, Andrew saw that he wouldn’t need to fight anything at all. Still, he was unable to changed into a more relaxed posture as he looked at the couch and saw Boyd cuddling a sleeping Neil from behind. Neil was so much smaller than him that it was kind of comical, but also not. 

_That’s my job_, a traitorous part of Andrew provided and he sneered at himself. Boyd chose to look up at that time and frowned when he saw Andrew looking at them like a fucking creep. 

Andrew turned around and left, not even bothering to go get his toothbrush. He passed Renee on the way without saying a word and, even though he was in the staircase, he was still able to hear Matt ask Renee in a loud whisper, “What is wrong with him?” 

Yeah… what was wrong with him? 

* * *

Sleep did wonders to Andrew’s mood, though it felt weird to sleep for eight uninterrupted hours instead of the four hours he had already been used to. 

He woke up to find out that Renee had updated both Boyd and Day on their plans. Day had already made it pretty clear that he was _not _going absolutely _nowhere _near DiMaccio. Apparently, Day thought they were stupid for even _cogitating _messing around with Moriyama’s personnel. Andrew thought about mimicking a chicken towards him, but he didn’t care about the guy to torment him like that. 

With four people, their plans for DiMaccio seemed to grow to more elaborated proportions. Neil had access to DiMaccio’s whole schedule, and the guy was an evident headache. A pebble on their collective shoes. 

He was _always _accompanied by someone or accompanying someone as a bodyguard. Never being alone made their lives’ difficult, and Neil not having anything that would be enough to bait him also didn’t help. 

They thought and thought and thought about it until they felt somewhat ready to go. They packed and Kevin really didn’t want to be left behind, all alone and vulnerable, but there was no reason to take him if he wasn’t going to help. Kevin was about to have a breakdown, when the universe came to help him in the cruelest way possible: 

Renee received a notification that the Foxes were live and opened up the stream, only to gasp loudly. 

Boyd said, “What’s wrong?” and looked at the phone screen over her shoulder. His eyes looked like ginormous saucers when he whispered, “Oh, no. Oh, _shit_.” 

Kevin tried to look at Renee’s phone, but Andrew just rolled his eyes and got his own phone out of his pocket. 

And froze. 

“Aaron was bitten! :(” his screen told him. Neil looked at Andrew’s screen over from behind and the air left his lungs in a sudden exhale. 

“_Fuck,_” Neil said and Andrew swallowed nothing past the lump on his throat. 

Yeah… fuck indeed. 

* * *

They stopped putting their stuff on Neil’s car to sit down and watch the live. Aaron’s face was blotchy with red patches in an uneven pattern. Katelyn was glued to his side, holding his hand like it was enough to keep the Cold away. 

It wouldn’t be, Andrew knew. Aaron’s chances of being immune to the infections were laughably small. 

Dan Wilds was apparently in the middle of their story—something about how they were running errands near one of the vampire parties and one of them seemed to have forgotten that he had donors _inside_, deciding to just attack Katelyn. Dan and Aaron had been a few paces behind her, so they got there and helped Katelyn fight the vampire off. 

In an unlucky move, Aaron had made the vampire lose his footing. The vampire grabbed Aaron’s arm, trying to keep himself upright and only ended up pulling him down with him. 

Aaron’s shoulder hit the vampire’s mouth. 

His teeth scratched his skin. 

That might not be enough, but it probably was. You only needed an open wound and a vampire mouth to get infected after all. No drinking blood needed. 

They watched as Dan finished the story and started to read comments. Nicky appeared during the middle of the live to bring Aaron something to drink, and he was weeping openly. 

Andrew watched it all without feeling anything. When Dan read, “So, are you going to make Aaron Turn or try to make him ride the Cold until he isn’t infected anymore?” 

Wilds looked at Aaron, who seemed far away from it all. The only thing that seemed to be keeping Aaron in the room at all was the hand that his girlfriend was holding. Wilds called Aaron’s name softly, and he turned slowly to blink at her. 

“Are you going to Turn or not?” 

Aaron took a deep breath. “I… I don’t know.” 

Wilds shrugged and kept the live going. 

After a few seconds, Aaron got up and dragged his girlfriend upright with him, walking out of the room without saying goodbye to anyone. 

Andrew did the same. 

* * *

As Andrew had said to himself before (and also to Aaron), he knew that this wasn’t really about finding a new family. It was about him feeling like he was _needed_, even though he wasn’t _wanted,_ even though he couldn’t care less about his own existence. 

Now, though, what kind of support could Andrew give Aaron? If he was really infected, he had two options: Turn, or go the roughly 88 days that seemed to be enough for the average immune system to get rid of the Cold. In those almost three months, Aaron would be _hungry_. He would have to be restrained, locked away, because as the days without a droplet of blood passed, he would become more and more hungry, more and more irrational, more and more dangerous. 

If he was able to go through with all of it and come out on the other side though, he would get the privilege of still being human. 

It didn’t matter how Andrew looked at the situation. He wasn’t needed and there was nothing that he could do. 

* * *

After what felt like forever, Neil came after Andrew with a plate of lukewarm spaghetti. Andrew looked down at it, and couldn’t stop his mind from seeing that it was just a brain there, in a plate. He knew it wasn’t the right color or anything like that, but he still couldn’t shake the visualization. After all, he had been tormenting himself with disturbing images for a while now. 

He couldn’t bring himself to do it in front of Neil, though. Neil for some reason was just able to capture all of Andrew’s focus. It was annoying as fuck. 

“How are you feeling?” Neil asked. Andrew gave him a deadpan look. 

“I’m not feeling anything.” 

Neil sighed, but didn’t argue. “Renee is talking to Wymack. They’re trying to decide what they are going to do now. Apparently, Aaron is saying that he’ll try to ride the infection.” 

“More power to him.” 

“They are also discussing if the three that came out should go back in just so that they can all stick together.” 

“Yeah, why not throw our hard job away, right?” 

“I’m thinking about going to Palmetto.” 

_That_ made Andrew pause. “For what?” 

“Well… first of all, I’m a vampire. If they try to restrain Aaron and Aaron somehow gets out, he will be able to bite me all he wants and I won’t get infected. It will only make his Cold go back to day one and his torment go on for a little longer. I won’t care about how much Aaron is gonna beg, I won’t care about him crying to give him blood, I won’t feel tempted to release him like he’s going to ask me to do. I’m also stronger than him. I’m the perfect candidate to help him get through this.” 

Andrew had sat up during Neil’s monologue and was looking at him like he was crazy. “If you go in, you won’t be able to go out.” 

“It’s not like I have anything important that depends on my ability to be free.” 

“What about your revenge vacation?” 

Neil shrugged and gave Andrew a tiny smile. “I can always ask my Uncle to hire a hitman.” 

Andrew snarled and sprung from the bed. Neil apparently didn’t expect him to do that, because they both went down _hard_. The thud of Neil’s head making contact with the ground could be worrying if Andrew was in a position to care about anything, but Andrew was more worried about _angry_. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Andrew snarled. 

Neil seemed to be a little out of it, probably from the head trauma that he’d just suffered; Andrew was of the belief that he had suffered a head trauma a long time before, because what he was offering was just plain _stupidity_. 

“I’m just,” Neil stopped, frowned and immediately grimaced when apparently frowning made his head hurt. “Ok, you’re not gonna like this, but you deserve a family, Andrew.” 

Andrew _growled _wordlessly. He was past the point where he felt like he was coherent. “_Not at the cost of your freedom_,” he enunciated carefully. “Also, Aaron doesn’t want to be my family. Also also, _I don’t need a fucking family_.” 

“Hey, hey, Andrew,” Neil said in a soothing voice. His red eyes were a pair of shiny apples. Tempting and tempting as Andrew watched all of Neil’s features like it was the last time that he was going to see them. “Guess what? I can do anything that I want. I don’t need your approval to go inside the Coldtown.” 

“You… fucking dumb _martyr,_” Andrew growled and brought his arm back to punch Neil, who just watched him. Andrew’s hand trembled with the effort of not absolutely _destroying_ Neil’s face with his fists. 

In the end, Andrew just got up and got out of the bedroom. He _refused _to engage with this. And refused to imagine a world where someone would willingly sacrifice themselves for the meager chance of giving a happy ending to Andrew. 

* * *

“_Hi,_” Neil said through the screen on Andrew’s laptop. “_My name is Neil Josten. As you can see, I’m a vampire._” 

Neil messed around with the camera, and it showed Aaron in the background, looking grumpy. 

“_You do know that this looks like a porn intro, right?_” Aaron said gruffly and looked at Neil through slitted eyes when he dared to laugh. 

“_I swear to you that my first thought was actually a torture scene_.” 

“_That’s not better!_” 

“_Well, I can always leave you to rot on your own? That’s an option, you know?_” 

Aaron growled at Neil, who simply gave his back to Aaron and went back to looking at the camera. “_As I was saying, I’m a vampire. We are in the Palmetto Coldtown and Aaron here unfortunately got bitten. We’re here to show you what happens when your body goes through the Cold, and also to tell you: if you’ve been bitten, do _not _try to deal with this at home. You might be setting yourself up for a bigger tragedy than it needs to be._” 

Neil kept rambling on about the correct procedures that should be followed in case a person was bitten. Aaron was visibly bored in the background. 

Andrew sighed because his favorite part was fast approaching. On the screen of his laptop, Andrew watched Aaron started to grumble in the background and Neil said, “_Hey, keep being rude to me and this is going to come back and bite you in the ass! But then, maybe you like being bitten, huh?_” 

“_No fucking puns, Josten. This isn’t a joke._” 

“_Uh, it really is a joke? And besides, what are you going to do? You’re all barks, no neck bites_.” 

“_Josten…_” 

“_Suck it up, Minyard_.” Then he grinned and the video was over. 

That was the first video they had ever made in the channel. Neil always released a daily update on their YouTube channel. He refused to record everything that happened, because “Some people, even Aaron Minyard, deserve the dignity of saving their worst moments to themselves”. 

Some of the other Foxes had decided to stop campaigning to come out. Allison wanted out to be with Renee and Seth wanted out just because his relationship with Allison had fallen through and he was the Fox with the least amount of donations. Matt and Kevin came back inside—the former because he missed Dan and the latter because he couldn’t deal with the paranoia of thinking there was a crime family shadowing every step he took. 

Neil called his uncle to be able to get Allison and Seth out. It’d been almost two weeks since any of them who stayed at Neil’s house had seen Seth, but Allison was around, mainly because Renee was still here. Renee had been hunting and saving up markers since Neil went back in. She was a better hunter than Andrew, who had stopped hunting from the moment he received three markers from Neil’s uncle—“For making my nephew give up on this suicide mission of his!”—, but eventually he offered to give her support on hunts, and she accepted. 

Lately he had been no good on missions, though. Neil and Aaron’s channel—“Suck it up”, named after the last sentence in the first video—was currently on its eighty-first video with Aaron. There had been fewer jokes and a lot more tension as Aaron basically screamed and begged to be Turned, but was ignored by Neil. 

It was almost over, though. Finally. 

Andrew knew exactly what he was going to do with his life now. Aaron still wanted to come out, and that was fine. Andrew’s responsibility towards him were now over, since he had a marker waiting for him when he was finally clean. His girlfriend also had one and was going to come out with him; apparently both of them wanted to follow medical careers or something like it, to help people in useful ways or whatever heartfelt bullshit they sprouted. Like whatever they say or do _mattered_. 

Nicky, on the other hand, was going to stay in Palmetto to help Neil. Because apparently, one thing that came out of airing a vampire taking care of a human through the Cold was that infected people flocked to Palmetto to be helped by him, even though Neil was insufferably rude and almost completely devoid of outward demonstrations of empathy. 

After his second week of work, Neil also started to record videos of a family, too—a single mom and her kids, a seven years-old boy and a three years-old girl, all of them infected—and apparently they were going to start seriously building a place that would be able to take proper care of the infected. 

Neil would need help. 

Andrew _wanted _to be helpful. 

Neil still talked with Andrew constantly, not seeming to be bothered by the fact that Andrew rarely answered. Neil just _knew_ he had Andrew’s attention, without needing to verify at every second like most people. It was weird being known like that, but thrilling too. 

Andrew wanted _more_. 

So really, it wasn’t difficult at all to decide that he was going to go inside too. Andrew’s terrible abilities of a bounty hunter weren’t needed anymore. Andrew had started working at a supermarket and saved up all his money to buy a marker of his own accord, if he needed. 

If Neil decided that he wanted to pull some strings and get out of there after all, that would be fine. Andrew would also be able to get out. 

If Neil decided that he wanted to stay, and keep helping people in his own, asshole-ish way… Andrew would also stay with him. 

And while they were together, Andrew would have a serious conversation with Neil about them. Their future. Maybe, their future _together._

Andrew looked at the little board he kept up in his room with how much he’d saved. He was almost there. He wanted to succumb to impatience but one look at his screen that still showed the thumbnail of Neil’s videos straighten his resolve again. 

_Suck it up, Minyard._

So Andrew sucked it up and dreamed about his future life inside a Coldtown, just like he used to. 

But this time it was better, because he knew the dreams weren’t that far off from his new reality. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
would anyone be interested in reading Andrew having the Feelings Talk with Neil? Maybe accidentally while they were helping some of the infected people?? Maybe???? they recorded their first kiss??????? or something?????????  
lmao if that's of your interest, tell me in the comments or come yell more ideas at me on my [tumblr](http://polzkadotz.tumblr.com)!!!!!  
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

**Author's Note:**

>   
if you see any mistakes, yell gently at me pls????  
  
i'm [polzkadotz](http://polzkadotz.tumblr.com) if you wanna ask anything!!!  
Thank you SO MUCH for reading!!!!!


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